LONDON - 16 June 2006 - 600 words
Films: Kamataki; Memories in the Mist
Fr Peter Malone
A fine and beautiful film from French Canadian director Claude
Gagnon. Married to a Japanese woman, Gagnon lived in Japan for
more than a decade and brings to the movie a good understanding
of the interactions between east and west.
The movie focuses on a young man, well portrayed by Matt Smiley,
who is suicidally depressed after the death of his father. His
desperate mother sends him to stay with his uncle in Japan (played
by veteran Japanese Tatsuya Fuji).
The uncle is a potter, using the ancient art of kamataki. The
film shows the detail of pot-making and uses it as a way of calm,
meditation as well as an opportunity for responsibility, especially
keeping the fire at the right heat in order for the pots to set.
The situation gives the young man an opportunity to reassess
his life, see his French-Canadian background in perspective as
well as understand something of his Japanese heritage.
The portrait of the old man is a mixture of wisdom and humour.
Through him the young man learns the nature of relationships,
of love and commitment.
The Japanese settings are beautifully photographed, contrasting
with the icy opening in Montreal.
The film explores values, the spiritual journey, the meeting of
cultures and mutual understanding. Kamataki won the Ecumenical
Prize at the Montreal Film Festival, 2005.
Memories in the Mist
Bengali cinema is the exact opposite of Bollywood. It is not bright,
loud, musical and colourful. It has the tradition of one of the
nation's most celebrated film-makers, Satyajit Ray. Prolific
director, Dasgupta, was a disciple of Ray but takes the tradition
into a combination of the realistic and the mystical. There is
a great dignity and beauty in the seriousness of many of the Bengali
films.
Memories in the Mist turns out to be a ghost story, not in the
sense of eerie spookiness. Rather, the ghost, one might say the
haunted spirit of a father who is restless until he is reconciled
with his widow and son, enters into the real world, interacts
with his family in a naturalistic way (and all is filmed as if
it were all real). The effect of this is profoundly moving.
The father, who had long since been left by wife and son because
of his affair with an actress, narrates the story, tells us about
his son and his wife. He is able to be with his long-suffering
wife who realises that she acted too hastily and judgementally
in leaving him. He is able to meet his son and be delighted in
the son's willingness to forgive.
In the meantime, the son, a very good and kind man, is being spurned
by his own ambitious wife who finds a career in writing (and breaking
the Guinness Book of Records) American travel guides in Bengali.
She also has her own secrets and burdens her husband with them.
But, he has been strengthened in his quiet expectations of himself
by his encounter with his father and looks to the future with
the two children in hope and love.
A troupe of wandering actors recur during the film bringing song,
dance and the tones of Hindu religious mythology. An old flute-playing
man and his associate also recur at key times during the man's
childhood and his present crises. These give the film the mystical
tone while the ghost (whose themes of repentance and reconciliation
are spiritual) enters into the real world. A fine and moving example
of Bengali film-making.
© Independent Catholic
News 2006
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